


you'll always be the only one

by elsaclack



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anyways, Canon Divergence, F/M, alright before any of you come after me, is this angst directly from my brain?? only Sort Of, not an organic thing that i thought of all by myself, so am i still obsessed with angst?? u betcha, this was a request
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 13:39:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14749904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsaclack/pseuds/elsaclack
Summary: "since im such an evil person, i just imagined... what would’ve happened if they didnt find out about the bomb...?" - tumblr user @butwhereisnerd





	you'll always be the only one

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S NOT MY FAULT!!!! NOT MY F A U L T!!!!!!!!

When the bomb detonates, Jake is not inside the building.

He’s outside with his back to the front doors - about four feet in front of them, and a foot to the right, to be exact - and the force of the explosion blows out the glass in the doors, sending glass shards shredding through his jacket and slicing across his skin. It’s not quite enough to completely throw him off his feet (though part of that is his slightly-higher-than-average amount of coordination thanks to all his years as a cop), but it’s definitely enough to send him stumbling forward several paces, right into the unsuspecting arms of his aunt Linda.

She, of course, immediately begins teetering backwards in her hideous pink heels, and Jake instinctively holds her fast and keeps them both from barreling into her friend. And for a moment, all he can really do is stare at his aunt’s face. He watches the color drain, the terror blossom and spread, the scream spill out of her lipstick-smeared lips, and he thinks, _ how rude of her to bring an uninvited guest when she only RSVP’d for one _ .

His ears are still ringing for several long moments after the explosion, so while he can  _ see  _ his aunt screaming, he can’t actually  _ hear  _ her. So he stands, hands gripped tight around her upper arms, and watches as if through a long tube as she screams and squirms and cranes around toward her friend. And then he turns his head to the right and watches a sea of people spilling out into the street from the blown-out front doors of the rec center, each wearing identical masks of terror, and there in the middle of them stands a motionless, horrified Boyle.

Whose suit is ripped and covered in soot. And Jake thinks,  _ oh, shit, Amy’s gonna kill him _ .

It’s the thought of Amy that finally jolts him out of his shock.

All at once, the sounds of the scene around him come roaring in, bringing a surge of adrenaline and terror along with them. Jake releases his grip on his aunt and takes off toward Boyle, fighting the flow of the crowd to get to him. He can see Terry heading toward them from the opposite direction; they reach Boyle simultaneously. “What the hell is going on?” Terry shouts over the commotion.

“Someone planted a bomb!” Charles screeches over his shoulder. “We need to get everyone away from the building -”

“ _ Where’s Amy _ ?”

When the bomb detonates, Amy is in the makeshift bridal suite.

The first thing she’s able to truly comprehend through the haze is the fact that she has somehow managed to go from standing on her own two feet to lying on her back, left arm pressed against something flat and solid. The wall, she thinks, but that doesn’t make any sense. Because when she was standing just a second ago the wall was a good seven feet behind her; when she was standing, she was examining her reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, admiring the way the pretty white lace of her dress contrasted against the smooth skin of her shoulders. She was standing a few seconds ago, and now she’s not, and it’s too dark and too hazy for her to make any sense of it.

It’s humid in here - it’s a bathroom in a public rec center in May - and the nerves of this whole ordeal must finally be getting the better of her, because she can’t seem to remember how to breathe. It’s in one, out one, but something heavy is pressing down on her diaphragm and her gut as a whole and no matter how much she tries, she can’t draw a breath. Her mouth is dry, her tongue caked in - in something, something that tastes  _ bad  _ \- and when she tries to shift, she recognizes something heavy is pinning her to the ground.

The ground she doesn’t remember laying down on.

She can feel herself groaning, bleeding, but she can’t hear anything beyond a dull ringing; when she opens her eyes it’s dark, both because of the blackness still lapping along the edges of her vision and the fact that the lights over her head are now turned off for some reason.

The weight of whatever it is on top of her is impossibly heavy, pinning her right arm to the ground, but it’s not until someone yanks the object on top of her back and off of her that the pain actually sets in.

The first thing she hears is her own sharp cry of pain.

“ _ Santiago  _ -” Amy squeezes her eyes shut at the hands against her face, and then releases another strangled groan when said hands begin to tap at her cheeks. “God, Amy,  _ open your eyes _ -”

She does. And Rosa’s pale, sweaty, panic-stricken face slowly swims into focus.

“Can you hear me?” Amy nods, slowly, wincing at the twinge in her neck. “Are you in a lot of pain?” Again, she nods. “D’you know who I am?”

“R-Ro-Rosa,” she rasps.

A look of relief briefly crosses her face, before a determined snarl takes its place. “The door smacked you in the head in the explosion,” Rosa explains, and her calm and even voice is in direct contrast with the words she says. “You’re bleeding a lot. Stay down.”

Explosion? “Wha’ happ’ned?”

Rosa’s face is grim. “Bomb.” she quietly grunts.

Panic seizes Amy’s nervous system, sending a dizzying wave of adrenaline and fear surging through her veins. Rosa’s here with her, but she wasn’t the only other person in the room before.

“Where - Gina -”

Rosa glances back, over her shoulder, and then returns her attention to Amy’s face. “She’s by the sink, she’s okay,” Rosa says soothingly. “Relax.”

Amy does her best to follow Rosa’s instructions but pain is spreading through her body, so quickly her very bones seem to be humming beneath the force of it; teeth clenched, eyes closed, she focuses on her breathing.

And in her head, as she counts to the beat of the exercise she learned back at the academy, she realizes she hears that count exclusively in Jake’s voice.

Her eyes fly back open again.

“Jake -” she tries to sit up but Rosa’s hands are forcing her shoulders back down again before she can even sit up, and Amy releases a strangled shout at the painful spasm in her lower back. “Oh my god, oh my god, where’s Jake?” she hoarsely demands.

“I don’t know,” Rosa admits, and if Amy wasn’t so frantic she’d notice how strained Rosa’s voice suddenly is. “I don’t know, he - he might’ve still been outside -”

“I think he was,” Gina suddenly pipes up, and Amy  _ does  _ notice how thick and tearful Gina’s voice is. “I think - I saw him two minutes before I came in here and he was still out there saying hi to people.”

It’s no guarantee, but it is a small comfort. It’s at the very least enough to convince her to relax a little more. So she lets her head fall back to the floor, lets her eyes fall shut, lets the tears pricking beneath her eyelids spill down her temples to soak into her hair. “Jake,” she breathes - but it comes out like a whimper.

When the bomb detonates, Jake is not inside the building.

Neither is Victor Santiago.

“ _ Where the hell is Amy _ ?” Jake repeats, only tangentially aware of the fact that he’s gripping Charles’ shoulders and shaking him, as if doing so will dislodge the answer.

“ _ Jake _ !” a loud, booming voice sails over the general disarray still unfolding around them, and when Jake looks, he spots Amy’s dad fighting the tides to get to where he and Charles and Terry stand. Jake straightens, panic mounting, and then Victor’s gripping his shoulders so tight he’s certain the blood flow to his fingers is cut off. “Where’s Amy?”

“I - I don’t know,” Jake admits, and the feeling is not unlike he’s circling the drain. “I don’t know, I’ve been out here greeting people and - and I think - I think she’s still -”

Anguish erupts across Victor’s face and it’s like Jake’s heart has left his body, watching the realization dawn. He’s not even sure that he’s accepted it yet, but he’s seen that look before.

At crime scenes, on the faces of the victim’s family and friends, right after he breaks the news.

“I have to get inside,” he hears himself say, and Victor’s brow furrows. “I have to get in there, I have to - to find her -”

“It’s not safe, son,” Victor says firmly over Charles’ wails of dissent. “There could be another explosive that hasn’t gone off yet, or whole building could come down - we need to wait for the bomb squad -”

Jake jerks away, yanking himself out of Victor’s grasp and taking off toward the doors in one quick move. He’s fairly certain Victor, Charles, and Terry alike are all screaming his name, but the sound of it is lost beneath the chaos still unraveling in the streets and the thundering sound of Jake’s heartbeat in his ears.

The bomb looks like it was in a vent set just a foot or two behind the podium, based on the crater that has taken the place of the flower pillars and the delicate arch Amy had special ordered for them. What was once rows upon rows of impeccably-placed chairs are now little more than piles of singed kindling; they, along with the pink-and-white tulle that was hanging from the walls, are all on fire. Random pieces of ceiling and arch support keep falling, adding to the chaos, and as Jake runs he spots several places where shrapnel blown from the bomb hit the wall so hard it actually managed to puncture the cinder blocks. That combined with the blown-out lights overhead and the awful, horrible silence all around him sends his gut sinking down to his toes with dread.

There are no signs of human life inside this room.

“ _ Amy _ !” he bellows, trying and failing to shake the feeling of shouting into an empty cavern.

When the bomb detonates, Amy is inside the makeshift bridal suite.

She is  _ not _ inside of the room originally intended to be the bridal suite.

By a stroke of pure misfortune (or so it seemed at the time), the original bridal suite - a recently-renovated office situated to be on the other side of the wall behind the arch where she and Jake were supposed to be married - was off-limits due to a bad leak in the ceiling. She’d bemoaned it a little, but ultimately decided that she’d rather get ready in a bathroom than in a room with mouldy carpet. It is because of this, then, that she ends up on the opposite side of the rec center when the bomb detonates; it is because of this that she and Rosa and Gina alike were not all immediately killed in the explosion.

It is also because of this that Jake does not immediately know where to find her.

“Someone has to try to get out of here and get help,” Rosa mutters through grit teeth. She’s ripped a good chunk of her bridesmaid dress off to use as a dressing to Amy’s head wound, and while it does seem to  _ feel _ like the blood flow has slowed down, she can tell by the wetness pressing against her forehead that the cloth is very likely soaked through with her own blood.

It doesn’t help with the whole trying to stay calm thing.

“I can go -”

“No.” Rosa snaps, and though Amy can’t see anything beyond Rosa’s face and a small portion of the ceiling still in tact over their heads when she manages to force her eyelids to flutter open, she can perfectly imagine Gina recoiling. “It’s too dangerous. We have no idea what’s going on outside, it has to be me.”

“So - okay so move.”

There’s a shuffling, a change in pressure against Amy’s forehead, and when she groans and opens her eyes again it’s suddenly Gina’s face filling the vast majority of her vision. There’s a tangible kind of fear emanating from each individual line in Gina’s face, and a hardness in her eyes that Amy is not familiar with. Though her hands shake when she briefly lifts them to push her hair out of her face, they are warm and steady against Amy’s forehead, and for a moment Amy nearly chokes on her own gratitude.

“I’ll be right back,” she hears Rosa call, and now sounds from outside the bathroom are reaching her. Sounds of electrical wires bursting and glass shattering and the tell-tale crackle of fire burning. It’s loud and chaotic and Amy’s drowning in it, in her fear and uncertainty and desperation.

“It’s okay,” Gina murmurs softly - and it’s so out of place, for words of soothing comfort to come from Gina, but Amy can’t wrap her mind around that right now. She just leans into it instead, closing her eyes at the soft stroke of Gina’s fingers through her blood-soaked hair and the quiet, steady stream of comforting nonsense spilling from Gina’s lips. “It’s alright, Rosa’s gonna get help and we’re gonna be okay.”

When the bomb detonates, Jake is thinking about what Amy’s dress will look like.

He knows it’s white, but he doesn’t have much else to go on; in his mind, he pictures a lot of lace reminiscent of the doilies that once littered every available surface in her apartment before he moved in with her. He imagines something delicate, something soft and feminine, something not unlike that sparkly mermaid dress she wore all those years ago before his undercover stint. She’s gorgeous all the time, but in his mind she’s achieved impossible, ethereal standards of beauty in this imaginary dress.

When he actually  _ sees _ the dress, he can’t really comprehend it. It’s white - or it  _ was _ white - but that’s all he can process through the desperation, the heart-stopping terror seizing his entire body at the sight of his fiancee half-buried beneath the rubble, motionless on the ground. He registers that Gina is crouched beside her head but he can’t acknowledge her; Gina falls away, out of his vision, and then it’s just Amy.

A barely-conscious, feebly-stirring, bloody-bruised-and-broken-looking Amy.

(Her white wedding dress is stained red with blood.)

“ _ Ames _ ,” he chokes, and her eyelids flutter open at the sound of his voice. She makes a noise at the back of her throat - hoarse, desperate, almost animalistic - and tries to sit up, but he gently forces her back down again. “Sh, sh, it’s okay,” he says over her muted cry of pain, and the words come out hoarse and thick with tears he’s only marginally aware of shedding. “It’s okay, babe, it’s okay, I’m right here, you’re gonna be okay.”

She struggles to swallow, to rasp out ‘ _ I love you _ ,’ and her face is blurry in his vision thanks to the tears flooding in. “I love you too,” he practically whimpers, leaning down to press his lips against the small stretch of skin on her forehead not drenched in blood. “I love you so much,  _ so  _ much,” he whispers against her hairline.

It’s a slow-going eternity before the sounds of sirens from outside get loud enough to be heard from where they’re huddled, and within minutes Jake’s craning around to the sight of EMTs clambering over debris in the hallway to get into the bathroom. Amy’s hand is cold where it’s clasped between both of his, and though that’s not necessarily outside the norm for her, it’s the single most terrifying thing in his life. So terrifying, in fact, that it takes far longer than it really should for him to drop her hand and move away from her so that the EMTs can get to her. It’s like ripping a limb off, letting go of her hand; it’s like ripping his own heart out, staggering away from her.

They strap Amy down to a gurney and haul her out of the building as quickly as they can first, and Jake is hot on their heels. From his peripheral Jake can see Charles and Terry and Victor now across the street, behind the police barrier. He can’t spare them even a glance, though; he’s too busy trying to shake the EMT hovering at his elbow off, too busy trying to force his way back to Amy’s side before they get her loaded into the back of the ambulance.

She’s looking for him when he finally gets back to her side.

“ _ Jake _ -” she whimpers, and his whole body reacts; all at once he’s shouldering an EMT out of the way to grip her outstretched left hand as hard as he dares.

“I got you,” he says, voice low, and her chest seizes and heaves with a half-formed sob.

He spends the vast majority of the ride to the hospital studying her face, memorizing every flicker of pain that creases her brows and folds her lips down into a frown. He commits each hiss and grunt and groan that escapes her chest to memory, he catalogues it all, filing it away in a box meant for some deep dark corner of his mind.

Someone did this to her. Someone attacked her. And based on the placement of the bomb, he’d be willing to bet that  _ he _ was meant to be caught in the initial explosion as well.

And already, he’s combing through his past, a list of names of possible suspects compiling itself in a matter of minutes.

They take Amy away when they get to the hospital, and even though they insist that her treatment will go far faster without him there to distract the doctors and nurses, Jake hates them for it. Because Amy’s his fiancee and she’s still crying and reaching for his hand when they wheel her away and even though an alarming stiffness is beginning to blossom from his lower back, a listless kind of restlessness is beginning to prickle in his veins without her here, within eyesight.

Someone attacked her and that person is still out there somewhere. For all he knows, they could be  _ here _ \- watching.

Waiting.

In total, it takes four nurses and the thinly-veiled threat of a sedative to convince him that his time would be most wisely spent seeking his own medical treatment for the lacerations on his back.

And forty-five minutes later, with his wounds cleaned and bandaged, his shredded shirt and jacket traded for a spare hospital sweatshirt, and the promise of an update on Amy’s condition coming soon, Jake wanders back out into the waiting room to find the squad (minus Rosa and Gina), his parents, and Amy’s parents all waiting for him. Charles and Victor seem to spot him simultaneously, for they both scramble to their feet at once; the rest of his patchwork family follows suit, every anxious eye fixated on him all at once.

“Uh,” Jake grunts, surprised at the hoarse and raspy quality of his own voice. “I - I don’t know anything yet. I think they had to take her into surgery, but I don’t know what for. They said they’d have an update soon.”

It’s almost like watching the waiting room from outside of his own body. He sees them all exchanging looks, hears the quiet and uncertain murmuring, but none of it really reaches him; none of it, that is, except for the glassy, tearful gaze Charles levels at him from three feet away.

“She’s gonna be okay,” Charles manages to choke between poorly-restrained sobs thundering in his chest. “She’s gonna be okay.”

Jake blinks, and blinks again, and then Charles is yanking him into a tight, bone-crushing hug. And it’s like a pin being yanked from a grenade, the way the emotion suddenly bursts inside his chest. He lets his head fall forward, forehead pressed against Charles’ shoulder, and his entire body is shaking so violently now that Charles’ grip around him is the only thing keeping him upright. And then there are people behind him, all around him, their hands on his shoulders and back and arms. Cold fingers worm through his and squeeze and he squeezes back, recognizing the almost barbaric rings digging into the flesh of his fingers as those of his mother’s.

He isn’t sure where it’s all coming from but he knows it probably won’t stop any time soon, so he resists the urge to contain it and instead lets someone guide him into the nearest seat. His mother’s hand remains steadfast in his own, as does Charles’ shoulder beneath his head, and the dull ache in his back echoes the clenching in his heart.

It’s another forty-five minutes before they get an update. By then, Rosa and Gina have joined them, dresses hopelessly stained and mangled beyond recognition, each looking battle-weary and pale beneath their stitches and bandaged wounds. Jake tenses when he recognizes the doctor, and even though the doctor is whistling a cheery whistle and smiling a tired-but-satisfied smile, Jake still holds his breath and grits his teeth.

The doctor zeroes in on Jake. “I assume you’re the lucky groom?”

Jake tries to nod, but when he leans forward, the words  _ “is she alright?” _ come spilling out of his mouth instead.

“She’s doing just fine,” the doctor says with a nod, and Jake deflates, every ounce of terror suddenly rushing out of him all at once. “We had to take her into surgery to reset her radius and ulna in her right arm, and she’s getting treatment for a grade three concussion, but otherwise she’s doing really well. She’s lucky,” he says as he glances down at the clipboard in his hands. “I’d be willing to bet that door actually protected her from a lot of flying shrapnel in spite of breaking her arm.”

“Door?” Jake repeats, glancing back at Rosa.

“Bomb blew the bathroom door off its’ hinges. That’s what knocked her out.” Rosa says.

Nausea churns in his gut, but he swallows it down and forces himself to look at the doctor once again. “Can I please go see her?”

The doctor smiles. “Right this way.”

Amy’s awake when he finally gets to her room.

He can tell right away that she’s still freezing, so it’s with very little thought that he yanks the hospital sweatshirt up over his head as he rushes inside, nearly tripping over his dress shoes in his haste to get to her. She’s crying, much like she was the last time he saw her, except now her face is no longer covered in soot and blood (even if it is several degrees paler than normal). A thick white bandage winds round and around her head but he hardly notices it, too consumed with the heady relief of being near her again to even care.

His borrowed sweatshirt lies in a crumpled heap on her lap and she’s pulling him in with shaking hands, fingers curling unsteadily in his hair, lips hot and greedy and frantic against his own.

He gives into it for a long moment, savoring the feeling of her, real and living, before he forces himself to pull back. “Easy,” he chokes, acutely aware of the fact that her chest is heaving. “You’ve gotta take it easy, babe.”

She nods almost frantically, eyes darting over his face, and he’s reminded with startling, brutal clarity of the way she’d looked at him months earlier on the day he was released from prison. “I’m okay,” she says - almost absently, like she’s been repeating it over and over again to the point where the phrase has lost all meaning. Her gaze darts down to his chest, now exposed, and further down, to his midriff and his side. She freezes. “You’re hurt?”

The question comes in a whisper, through stiff lips. He glances down and realizes too late that the angle at which he’s sitting has given her the perfect view of the medical tape holding the gauze against his back in place. “It’s nothing,” he says quickly, shifting closer to her, pulling her hands up and delicately squeezing her fingers on her left hand. “ _ You’re _ the one who’s hurt,” he says, tapping his index finger against the hard cast encasing her right arm while nodding his head toward hers simultaneously.

She appears oblivious. “What about - was anyone -”

“No one was killed,” he quickly interrupts, and her relief is palpable. “A couple of your cousins and one of my mom’s friends were in the lobby outside of the actual ceremony space, so they’re here, but everyone is stable and awake. Gina and Rosa also got hurt, but not as bad as you.”

“It’s nothing,” she says quickly, though he can tell by the practiced, measured shake of her head that it’s probably more than nothing. “It’s a concussion and some broken bones, I’ve had worse.”

“Yeah, but not on your  _ wedding day _ .”

A flash of pain - one he suspects is entirely unrelated to her injuries - cracks across her expression. “We were targeted,” she murmurs.

He clenches his jaw as he nods, shifting in even closer, bringing her hands within inches of his chest. “I’m so sorry, Ames,” he says, voice thick and strained.

A sad kind of confusion creases her brow. “Why are you apologizing?”

“I mean it’s - it’s obviously one of my enemies attacking me - attacking _us_ \- to get revenge for something I did. It’s kind of technically my fault.”

She frowns, left thumb worming out from his grasp to gently stroke along the sides of his fingers, and for a moment he just closes his eyes and basks in his touch. “I don’t blame you,” she says after a pause, and when his eyes flutter open she’s studying his face once again. “I mean - we don’t know for sure that it’s you - but if it is, I don’t blame you at all.”

He lifts her hands and kisses her fingers, lips lingering for a beat before he pulls them back once again.

He helps maneuver the sweatshirt over her bandaged head and the cast on her arm, and just as he’s smoothing the bottom hem over her lower back, a nurse comes by with another one for him. He pulls it on a bit carelessly, energy suddenly drained; it’s all he can do to resist the temptation to curl up in the bed there beside her and nod off his his face buried in her hair.

He doesn’t, though. He just reclaims his perch on the side of her mattress and regains his grip around both of her hands.

“This has been a complete disaster,” Amy murmurs after a long stretch of comfortable silence.

Jake grunts as he glances up from her fingers. “Seems about par for the course for us,” he sighs, and she nods, gaze fixated on her lap. Jake’s heart aches at the sight of her so miserable.

And like a flash of lightning, he’s struck by an idea.

“What if we get married tomorrow?”

She looks at him as if he’s grown a second head. “Our venue literally exploded, like, two hours ago.”

“No, I know, but - but we could go to City Hall. I know we won’t have our band or our guests or - or really anything we planned - but we could go, and we could be married by this time tomorrow.”

There’s an unfamiliar expression on her face, one he thinks might be of sadness. “Do you really want to get married in the same place where people go to get restraining orders?”

“Amy Santiago, I’d marry you in a heartbeat, anytime, any place.”

She stares for a minute - the reality of his conviction visibly sinking in - and then a small, tentative smile begins to blossom across her face. “Okay,” she says softly. “City Hall it is.”

The spark of sheer joy in his chest only lasts a moment. “ _ NO _ !” A familiar voice echoes out in the hall.

Charles stands framed in the doorway when Jake jerks around, his chest heaving as if he’d just run a great distance. There’s a manic gleam in his eye, a desperation in the lines of his face, and for a moment unbridled dread drowns all else out.

“You guys  _ can’t _ get married at City Hall!”

Amy sighs, but the sound of it is almost completely lost to Jake. “Were you  _ eavesdropping _ ?”

“I’m always eavesdropping.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You guys can’t get married at City Hall,” Charles says earnestly. “I’ve spent  _ way _ too many years watching your love ripen and grow just to have it  _ sullied _ by some awful courthouse ceremony!”

“Hey,” Jake says indignantly.

“No  _ heys _ , Jake. You guys are the most beautiful couple in America and you deserve the most beautiful wedding in America.”

“Charles,” Amy says, and when her voice cracks both Jake and Charles move closer to her instinctively. “Jake and I - we can’t afford another wedding. Not like the one we were supposed to have today. Plus, I don’t really care about the  _ wedding _ ,” her gaze flicks to Jake’s, expression warm and soft as her left thumb lightly strokes over his fingers. “I just care about the marriage.”

If he could burst from the amount of love surging through his chest, he would; as it is, he leans forward and kisses her softly, forehead brushing over hers when he slowly, gently pulls away.

“That’s really beautiful,” Charles says tearfully, and though Amy’s smiling she rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Give me half an hour, I can get a private waiting room decorated like a  _ dream _ -”

“No, Charles - Amy has a bad concussion,” Charles’ face falls, but Jake presses on, gently squeezing Amy’s hand as he speaks. “She really doesn’t need to be on her feet right now. We’re just gonna wait until the doctors release her and we’ll go to city hall tomorrow. Right, Ames?”

When the responding silence lasts longer than half a moment, Jake turns back toward Amy just to find her head bowed, peeking up at him through her lashes.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Do you have  _ any idea _ how long it took me to finish that wedding needlepoint pillowcase?” Jake barks out a laugh, letting his his head drop, and Amy’s fingers flex and ripple in his hands. “ _ Five and a half months, _ Jake. It already has today’s date on it and it and it’ll take  _ weeks _ to change it or - or to start completely from scratch - and I already had one of our extra wedding invitations framed.  _ And _ I have today’s date marked in all my planners and calendars…”

He shakes his head as she trails off and for a moment, he’s completely overcome with emotion. “You are so consistent,” he finally manages to murmur.

Her expression softens, affection unmistakable in her eyes. “And...and I just…” she glances down at their clasped hands, at her thumb still stroking against his fingers, at his fingers gently squeezing and rippling against the back of her hand. “I really hate not being married to you.”

A slow, curious smile spreads across his face. “What are you saying, Santiago?”

She shrugs, mirroring his smile. “Anytime, any place, right?”

He nods, and nods again, and then briefly presses his lips against her fingers before leaning in and kissing her soundly.

(When they kiss as husband and wife for the very first time, they are oblivious to their gathered audience, their matching sweatshirts, their faintly aching injuries; when they kiss as husband and wife for the very first time, they are oblivious to everything except each other.)

(When they find out it was in fact one of Amy's enemies who attacked their wedding, Jake spends a very confusing five minutes nearly suffocating in jealousy, which only dissipates when Amy reminds him (in that tired, long-suffering voice of hers) that because she's his _wife_ and he's her _husband_ , what's hers is his and what his is hers - including sworn enemies.)

**Author's Note:**

> title is a lyric from d'arline from the civil wars and while the message of that song is Not Accurate for this fic that specific line is,,,,,,v fitting


End file.
